May leftovers

Other recipes from the internet that I used this month:

*In the spirit of trying new things, I made a bitter gourd curry (kayippakka vartharacha curry). Despite its name, I was a bit surprised by the intense bitterness, it's definitely not one for the unadventurous. 

*A Mark Bittman Spanish influenced chickpea and chorizo dish. I made it mid-week and had no fresh spinach, so I grilled some large chunks of tomato and chucked them in before the whole dish is covered in breadcrumbs and grilled. It was really quite good.

*When Aldi had cheap bundt pans I bought one and made this orange bundt twice; it's a great cake for a crowd.

Indian BBQ

Last weekend we had Indian BBQ. I cooked from The Food of India by Priya Wickramasinghe, making parathas, pork tikka and a delicious salad dish called kosambri.

To convert the pork tikka recipe for the BBQ I skewered the marinated pork and grilled over indirect heat. I made the sauce the recipe calls for in the food processor using red onion, garlic, ginger, green chilli, coriander, and added about 30 millilitres of vegetable oil. This was served alongside the pork like a fresh chutney, it was refreshing and complemented the lightly charred pork well.

The salad was worth repeating, make a larger batch so you also have some for lunch the next day. For the coconut I used McKenzie's moist flakes, which worked really well here.

Kosambri
Serves 4
Adapted from The Food of India by Priya Wickramasinghe

50 g moong dal
200 g carrot or white radish
25 g grated coconut
25 g coriander leaves
1/2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp yellow mustard seed
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
2 tbsp lemon juice

Cover the dal in boiling water and leave to soak for at least 3 hours. Rinse well and drain.

Finely grate the carrot or radish in to a bowl and add the coconut, dal and coriander. Heat the oil in a small fry pan over a medium heat and add the mustard seed. When the seed begins to pop add the chilli and remove from the heat. Add the lemon juice and stir, pour over the salad once cold and toss well.

Hot Chilli

When we had the Texas barbecue I served a big pot of vegan chilli made from a kilogram of dried pinto beans and loosely based on a recipe I found online. I didn't try any but the guests really liked it and several requested the recipe, so I have recreated it with a more manageable quantity of beans.

There are several ways you could prepare beans; I like to precook them and then cook them with the spicy sauce in the oven, allowing everything to become rich and well-incorporated. Blending the onions and other aromatics is a trick I have picked up from doing lots of Indian cooking, it gives you a smooth and even sauce. Since the beans have been fully cooked this dish is good eating from the day it's made.

We ate chilli with this fresh corn and basil cornbread (as written but sugar reduced to 1/4 cup). It wasn't as fluffy and delicious as some other corn breads that I have made, but when cut into batons and served with the chilli the textures contrasted nicely.

Vegetarian Chilli
Serves 6-8 as a main

500 g dried pinto beans
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 brown onions
3 jalapeños
2 chipotle peppers with adabo sauce
3 tsp ground cumin
3 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chilli powder
1-2 red capsicums (about 350 g), diced
700 ml tomato passata
4 tsp fresh oregano or 2 tsp dried
4 tbsp fresh coriander

Preheat the oven to 120°C. Put the dried beans in a large oven-proof dutch oven, add the salt and water to cover by 4 centimetres. Bring to the boil, then cover and bake for 75 minutes or until soft, check the water level at 45 minutes and top up if necessary. When the beans are soft pour them and the cooking liquid into a large bowl.

Increase the oven temperature to 150°C. Add the oil to the dutch oven, peel and dice one onion and sauté until brown. Peel and quarter the other onions and place them, the jalapeños, chipotles and spices in a blender or food processor to make a smooth purée. Pour the purée onto the sautéing onions and cook until fragrant, then add the tomatoes, diced capsicum, oregano, cooked beans and their cooking liquid and bring to the boil. Cover and bake for 2 hours, then remove the lid and bake for a further hour. Add the fresh coriander just prior to serving.

December Leftovers

Roasted sweet potato salad

Cooking in December was unpredictable, these are the recipes I made from the internet:

*I made Spanish-style grilled fish using whole whiting. It was good, but not notably Spanish.

*To accompany our Jamaican barbecue we had a roasted sweet potato salad based loosely on this recipe from Mark Bittman. I roasted the sweet potato on the barbecue sprinkled with some chilli flakes and raw sugar, once cooked I left them to cool. I added a can of drained and washed kidney beans, some diced red onion, young rocket and some finely sliced radish. The salad was dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and seasoned with salt and black pepper. It was really tasty and made a great accompaniment to the jerk chicken.

*The glaze for the Christmas ham and the rub for the South Carolina barbecue. Both of these were very successful.

November Leftovers

In November I used these recipes from the internet

*Simmered black beans, a recipe that I have at least six times since it was published in March, I really should have memorised it by now.
*I recently bought some vanilla beans from Spice West on ebay, which seems to be the cheapest way to get them. I used some beans to make vanilla extract using this method, but used half the alcohol and twice the beans. It smells fantastic after four weeks, I probably won't wait eight weeks to use it.
*I finally got around to trying Peter Reinhart's Napoletana pizza dough recipe. The pizza bases made with this recipe were awesome and the long cold fermentation makes a lot of sense during the warmer months.
*I wanted to add something a but different to the lunchbox fruit loaf rotation, coconut-pineapple loaf cake from Martha Stewart looked good. I made mine with yoghurt and a 400g tin of crushed pineapple, it's very nice, but the crumbly texture lends itself more to a cake than a loaf.

Baked Beans

All the baked beans from the last batch I made using a Jane and Jeremy Strode recipe had been eaten, to replenish the stocks I used the recipe from The Cooks Companion by Stephanie Alexander. I modified the recipe based on what I had in the kitchen and because her beans didn't sound particularly delicious; I did mostly follow her technique though (I didn't purée tinned tomatoes in the food processor when they are going to cook for four hours however).

As far as Stephanie's technique goes, I can't see any advantage to par-boiling the beans then baking as she instructs, over fully cooking the beans and then cooking them a second time with the tomatoes with spices etc. like the Strode recipe. The later is definitely faster and having eaten this batch a few times now, I couldn't detect an appreciable difference in the texture of the beans. Otherwise the mix of vegetables and spices I concocted is quite pleasing and has a much greater depth of flavour than your typical baked bean sauce. I wouldn't bother with the maple syrup again as it makes the beans incredibly sticky when you reheat them and the flavour is disguised by the tomatoes and spices, brown sugar seem like a better choice.

Basque Beans
Makes six 520 gram tubs for freezing (12 serves)
Adapted from The Cooks Companion by Stephanie Alexander

700g dried haricot beans
3 tbsp olive oil
400 g diced brown onions (~2 large onions)
6 cloves of garlic, crushed and diced
275 g carrot diced small (~2 big carrots)
350 g roasted red capsicums, skin removed
2 400g tins of tomatoes, crushed
140 g tomato paste
175 ml of shizaz cabernet or other red cooking wine
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs of thyme
2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt
1 tsp crushed black pepper
1/2 cup maple syrup

Place the dried beans in saucepan and cover with cold water to four centimetres above the beans. Slowly bring the beans to simmer, then leave at a simmer for an hour.

Half an hour before the beans are done preheat the oven to 180°C; heat the oil in a large enamelled cast iron casserole and sauté the onion, garlic and carrot. After about 5 minutes or when the onion is translucent add the capsicum, wine, tomatoes, tomato paste and spices and mix well. Put a lid on the pan and let the mixture simmer until the beans have cooked for an hour.

Pour the beans and their cooking water in to the tomato mixture and stir, add water to cover by about 6 cm. Bake for about 4 hours or until the beans are fully cooked, checking after 2 hours to top up the water. When the beans are ready add the maple syrup and serve hot or divide into containers for freezing.

Bunmania

Red bean buns prior to steaming, I need to work on making them round

I read the book tie-in blog Asian Dumplings written by Andrea Nyugen. When she directed me to her article in the LA Times on steamed buns I thought about making buns, and when one of my food fancying facebook friends posted a link to the article week later, I decided I should probably make buns as soon as possible. I had bunmania!
 
The yeasted bun dough was very easy to work and the recipe tripled successfully. I used one third unbleached bread flour and two thirds unbleached plain flour to produce a mix that I assumed would have equivalent levels of gluten to the American brand she mentions.

I made curried chicken and red bean steamed buns; using Andrea's instructions for filling and steaming the buns. I altered the curried chicken filling slightly by skipping the coconut milk and cornstarch, instead I added three tablespoons of shredded coconut and a little bit of water to bring everything together. I made the red bean paste recipe as instructed, which made roughly twice a much filling as required to fill one quantity of bun dough. To steam sixteen buns at once, you will need to use two twenty-eight centimetre bamboo steamers. These buns were light, fluffy and delicious; infinitely better than the frozen variety and most of the steamed buns I have tried locally.

Pan fried pork and scallion buns at the back, red bean buns at the front.

I also made the pan-fried pork and scallion mini buns and dipping sauce from the article. These were my favourite buns of the day, the buns were pillowy on top and crispy on the bottom, and the dipping sauce complemented the filling brilliantly.

I think it probably took me about two hours to make all the fillings, the dough and prepare and cook the buns, which isn't bad as I had sixty-four buns roll out and fold. Since the dough can be left in the fridge after the first rise, these buns don't need to be a weekend project. The steamed buns can also be frozen after steaming and reheated from frozen in the steamer later, which will be great when it heats up a bit more and I start avoiding the kitchen.

Cheap and plentiful bamboo stemers available in all sizes at
Oriental Groceries
2/38 Weedon Cl, Belconnen

Le Cassoulet

Thirteen people attended Labour Day cassoulet, the meal was pretty amazing. The cassoulet was rich and delicious with exceptionally creamy beans, it was accompanied by a simple green salad dressed with a vinaigrette based on walnut oil (la salade à l'huile de noix). For afters we had the tart aux pommes with Chantilly cream and an orange and poppy seed cake. We had champagne, a few different red wines and a dessert wine, I am surprised I'm still standing.

The final recipe I used for the cassoulet is as follows, if you want to add steps like making salt pork, duck confit and/or pork sausages you will need to plan at least a week in advance; after soaking the beans overnight this recipe could be prepared in a day or over two days. You will need an enamelled cast iron pot with a 28 cm diameter/ 6.3 L volume at least. I didn't use breadcrumbs and I was satisfied with the crust.

Le Cassoulet
Serves 10-15
Adapted from Goose Fat & Garlic by Jeanne Strang

To prepare the beans:
1 kg of dried white haricot beans
350g of salt belly of pork
Pork rind to cover the base of your cast iron pot, rolled and tied
1 carrot
1 onion stuck with 2 cloves
Bouquet garni (thyme, parsley and bay leaves)
Ham bone (optional)
6 cloves of garlic
Salt to taste

The meat:
2 tbsp duck/goose fat
350 g pork shoulder, 2.5 cm dice
2 medium sized onions
700 g Toulouse or pure pork sausage
250 g tomatoes, peeled, cored and diced
1 L duck stock or water
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
bouquet garni

For the cassoulet:
3 pieces of confit de canard
Duck fat
Breadcrumbs (optional)

To prepare the beans:
Soak the beans overnight in lots of water. Drain, rinse and place in a large pan. Cover with cold water and bring it slowly the boil. Boil for 10 minutes, skim off the foam then add the salt pork, pork rind, whole carrot, onion, boquet garni, ham bone and garlic. Cover and allow the beans to simmer slowly until just tender, adding salt half way through if necessary; the beans should be soft enough after 30 minutes at a simmer, don't let them overcook and turn mushy.

To cook the meat:
Add the duck/goose fat to a heavy bottomed pan, heat and add the diced pork to seal. When the pork has browned add the onions and carrots and let them colour. Prick the sausages and fry them separately until until golden. Drain and cut the sausage into bite-sized pieces then add to the pork, onions and carrots. Add the diced tomatoes, garlic and herbs and cover with stock or water. Allow to simmer gently for about 50 minutes.

To assemble the cassoulet:
Break up the duck confit into bite-sized pieces, discarding the skin and bones.

Preheat the oven to 150°C. When the beans are tender, drain the cooking liquid into a bowl, discard the ham bone, onion, carrot and bouquet garni. Cut the salt pork into bite-sized pieces. Use the pork rind to line the bottom of a large enamelled cast iron pot (at least 28 cm/ 6.3L), fat side down. Cover the rind with half of the beans then layer on the meats. Cover the meat with the remainder of the beans then pour on the sauce from cooking the meat; top up with stock or the bean cooking liquid so that the beans are almost covered.

If using breadcrumbs sprinkle them over the cassoulet, then place in the over cooking for an hour. After the first hour top up pot with more bean cooking liquid, more breadcrumbs (if using), and dot the surface with duck/goose fat, then return to the over for another two hours, or until the crust has become and appetising golden colour.

Le journal intime de cassoulet III

Left shows ingredients for the beans, on the right the ingredients for preparing the meat.

Sunday October 4

I drained the soaked beans, dumped them in to my pot and covered them in water. While I brought the beans to a boil prepared the salt pork and the other ingredients used to flavour the beans. The salt pork turned out nicely, since it had a relatively short curing time it as not terribly salty. I took all the rind from the whole piece of belly I cured to cook with the beans as you're supposed to use rind to line the base of  the pot when cooking the assembled dish,  I probably needed even more rind that I had. The beans took about one and a half hours to get to the undercooked stage (still a bit grainy and hard in the middle) needed for baking the completed dish on Monday.

Once the beans were ready I cooked the meats; the Strang recipe instructs you to brown the sausages, then simmer the meats in stock for 50 minutes and then assemble the cassoulet in layers with the cooking liquid from the meats, topped up with the cooking liquid from the beans if required. One of the sausage casings had spilt so we had it with brunch, it's a very tasty sausage with large chunks of pork, appropriately seasoned with black pepper. After all the cooking was done the house smelled amazing.

Confit de canard from La Belle Chaurienne

To assemble the cassoulet I had to prepare the confit to add to the beans and meats. Despite the best intentions, I have never gotten around to making my own duck confit. Mostly because I never have a surplus of duck fat, any duck fat I do collect is rapidly recycled into roast or fried potatoes; but it's also because I have had a 1.25 kg tin of duck confit sitting in the can cupboard. The confit was sent to me by the Archivist's mum a few Christmases ago, it will provide duck legs for the cassoulet, a few more legs to eat with salad, and I can reserve the fat to make more confit. I extracted three duck legs from the creamy fat and broke them up to add to the cassoulet, cutting my fingers several times. Instructions for making confit from scratch can be found here; now that I have about 2 cups of fat I will be making some soon.

I guessed that I probably would be able to fit the cassoulet in my pot after all; but it's very full and very heavy. If I had a bigger oven I would have done it in two pots to increase the amount of delicious bean crust. I lined my pot with the rind, added a layer of beans, then meat, beans, duck, meats, and beans on top and poured in all the liquid from cooking the meats. Tomorrow it just needs to bake for at least three hours to finish cooking the beans and develop the crust.

Labour Day cassoulet is looking like it's going to be a success. Friends are bringing wine, I will make a very simple green salad and get some baguettes, and for dessert we will have tarte aux pommes.

Le journal intime de cassoulet II

Tuesday September 29

The salt pork required attention on Tuesday, I was a bit apprehensive about discovering rancid meat, but the pork smelled strongly of bay from the cure which seemed to have worked as it should. I tipped off about 100 millilitres of the liquid that had been drawn out of the pork, the belly was fairly rigid, I applied more cure and this time I placed it skin side down in the container then returned it to the fridge. Two more days to wait.

Since I was working from home I decided to test an new recipe for baked beans starting  from 700 g of dried haricot beans that I had leftover from something else. I think I have identified the first problem in my cassoulet plan, that is that there is no way one kilogram of cooked haricot beans and about another one and a half kilograms of meat are going to fit into my 28 centimeter round Chassseur French oven. The recipe fails to mention size of the cassole/casserole needed to prepare the completed dish. Damn.

Thursday October 1

A quick examination of the salt pork showed that while mostly firm it was a but squishy in places. I applied some fresh cure and will check it again on Saturday.

Friday October 2

I got the Accountant to pick up some pork sausages from the Lyneham Meat Centre on the way to my house, apparently their sausages are fairly awesome and it was especially fortuitous that they had Toulouse-style sausages. I picked up the rest of the ingredients today too, a just finished ham bone from Deli Cravings at the Belconnen Fresh Food Market and some lean pork.

Saturday October 3

Three tasks today, soak the beans, wash and wrap the salt pork and defrost the duck stock.

The salt pork was uniformly rigid after an additional two days in the cure; it hadn't lost much more liquid but it seemed more compact. I washed off all the cure, dried it well, wrapped it in a clean cotton tea towel and returned it to the fridge.

The fact I made duck stock in June and need the freezer space so I can use my ice cream maker was a significant motivating factor for Labour Day cassoulet. To make the stock I used the carcass of a roasted duck, wing-tips and a skinless neck (I rendered the fat from the neck skin earlier), covered the duck parts with water and simmered for at least in hour; I prefer to make neutral stocks so I rarely add aromatics - they can be usually added later anyway. From this I got about one and a half liters of stock.

Le journal intime de cassoulet I

Somewhere in the Pyrenees

Friday September 25

I finally decided to make a cassoulet this year since the warm spring weather seems to have changed its mind and it's cold again. Labour Day offers an opportunity for lengthy food prep and a long lazy lunch. Cassoulet is a bean stew with assorted meats that originates from the south west of France probably from the city Castelnaudary. It is renowned for taking days to prepare and its extreme richness.

I gather from the number and variety of recipes that I have read, that a fairly authentic cassoulet isn't really an onerous a task for the type of cook who can find the time to cook legumes from scratch. Besides soaking the beans overnight and cooking them for up to 6 hours, the number of days of prep required largely depends on the amount of charcuterie you're willing to do. Some recent cassoulet experiences from food bloggers are a good indication of the varying levels of complexity in the preparation of cassoulet

• The Heavy Table makes a cassoulet inspired by Juila Child's recipe
  
• The Accidental Hedonist makes cassoulet from Savuer magazine
• The Amatuer Gourmet makes Daniel Boulud's cassoulet
• Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman make cassoulet on No Reservations
• From the Canberra Cook develops her own recipe Launching the Cassoulet Project: Duck!, The Cassoulet Project Continues, Finally, Cassoulet

I re-read the cassoulet chapter in my copy of Goose Fat & Garlic by Jeanne Strang (currently available at Clouston and Hall for cheap). Strang describes her recipe as a compromise good for the "Anglo-Saxon kitchen"; like the "original" Castelnaudary version her recipe is principally pork, but adds a Toulousain twist with duck confit. The Strang recipe clearly divides the cooking process into three steps that seem easy to follow - cooking the haricot beans, browning all the meat, and assembling the beans and meats to bake.

From the Strang recipe I noted the first thing I would need to make was salt pork, which is used for cooking the beans. The book doesn't have a recipe for salt pork, so I spent some time searching the Belconnen Fresh Food Markets for pink salt assuming I would need it to preserve the pork. I didn't find any.

Saturday September 26

I googled salt pork and found that there's a recipe in Jennifer McLagan's book Fat which was featured on The Splendid Table podcast; you don't need pink salt to make salt pork as it happens. I retrieved my copy of the book and bookmarked the recipe for Sunday.

I solicited some wine advice from my Francophile mother in law; who kindly provided me with some regional suggestions, Madiran or Tursan. Should Cox Kelly, Jim or Dan Murphy fail me (and I believe that they probably will fail) I looked for some alternatives. I nabbed a copy of Cooking under the Influence by Ben Canaider and Greg Dencan Powell at the Lifeline Bookfair on Friday, they recommend a shiraz grenache blend, a syrah blend from the Rhône or a Barossa shiraz, so I should be able to find something complementary, possibly Canberran.

She also suggested a green salad with a mustard dressing to accompany the cassoulet and oeufs a la neige or madelines or macaroons with coffee. I'm not sure sure there will be space for anything but the cassoulet, but she might be on to something.

Sunday September 27

I bought the pork belly, about 1.3 kilograms. Salting it was simple and I was pleased to use up some more of the quatre épices I bought on a whim at Aldi. I made ther sure as instructed from salt, brown sugar, juniper berries, black peppercorns, bay leaves and quatre épices then rubbed it into all surfaces of the pork belly. It then went in to the fridge where it will sit unmolested until Tuesday. I plan to use the leftovers in baked beans or petit salé aux lentilles.

I did more more reading on cassoulet, leafing through another bookfair purchase, Elisabeth Luard's European Peasant Cookery, I was impressed by her cassoulet recipe which came from a neighbour she had while living somewhere in Languedoc. It is essentially a very similar recipe to the one I started with but adds lamb and lots of bacon rind, it excludes duck confit and the breadcrumb crust (I am undecided on the breadcrumb issue, but leaning towards not having it). I also found the recipe for Toulouse style cassoulet from Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France online, no lamb, insane amounts of duck confit and a meagre quantity of crumbs. Both the Luard and Wolfert recipes offer important notes on technique not mentioned in the Strang recipe, so they will be useful when it's time to cook.

August Leftovers

I cooked a lot of stir-fries and recipes from cooks books in August; the internet recipes I tried were

*Turkish carrot, tomato and lentil soup; unadulterated this soup is kind of grainy from the lentils, it definitely needs some sort of dairy added to improve the mouth feel.
*Nigel Salter's braised lamb shanks with leeks and haricot beans was enjoyed by the Archivist while I was out of town. Not too heavy for an early spring meal while leeks are cheap.

July Leftovers

*I inherited an unnatural affection for soup from my Dutch grandfather, as a result we eat soup weekly year round. Curried black-eyed pea soup has been in my bookmarks for a while. I withheld the bacon, doubled the spices using sambar masala instead of madras powder, after puréeing 3/4 of the bean mix I added a box of fresh baby spinach that I had chopped roughly. I added fried bacon to bowls just before serving. This soup was nice enough to add to my big mental list of soups, I'll be making it again.

*Continuing with soup experimentation I made a pot of spicy cashew tomato soup. I puréed the lot as recommended by the Culinate editors and only added the optional cayenne. Delicious and very filling, Afghan bread makes a nice accompaniment.

*I got a specific request for black bean quesadillas for dinner this month, I use this NYT recipe for simmered black beans. I like that the beans in this recipe are not heavily seasoned during cooking. The beans are great over Spanish rice with sour cream, avocado, and hot sauce or puréed and smeared in a tortilla with cheese, jalapeños, and fresh coriander, or served in huevos motuleños.

*With a recent yum cha meal on my mind, I made steamed spare ribs with black bean sauce. The marinade does not need the a tablespoon of salt in addition to all the other salty condiments. Easy to prepare and it didn't taste bad, but there was too much sauce and the flavour was too generic.

*I wanted a rice pudding recipe that serves two, I found on on Simply Recipes. The Archivist loved it, I though the egg yolk gave the pudding an unpleasant grainy texture.

*It seems July was the month of orange cakes, since I had a whole three kilogram bag of oranges to use up. Milk and Cookies' orange and yoghurt cake was the first cake of the month. It is dense and tasty as written and great smeared with raspberry jam, cut into batons and covered in hot custard, if you're in to that sort of thing. With some oranges still lingering in the fruit bowl I made this orange cake. I thought the cake tasted far too greasy. I also made a jaffa drizzle loaf from the BBCs Good Food. It sunk so I didn't bother with the drizzle, I suspect is was over-leavened since I finally got an oven thermometer and used the right size tin. The orange and yoghurt cake is the only recipe of the three that I'd make again.

June Leftovers

A quick review of some recipes that I made this month, that you can find on the internet:

*I brought some Korean chili powder back from Sydney earlier this month, Korean seasoned tofu, was a simple choice from the to-make list. I made this recipe with a 300 gram block of firm tofu and quantities of seasoning as written. I served the tofu with rice and some stir-fried greens, the tofu was very tasty and had an appealing texture cooked this way.

*Lamb shank and barley stew from Steve Manfredi's Sydney Morning Herald column. He calls it a stew and later a soup, my version was definitely soupy. I couldn't get celeriac so I used a swede instead, which when combined with pumpkin and carrots led to an unexpectedly sweet, but oddly delicious soup. It takes longer than 40 minutes to get shanks falling off the bone-cooked at the suggested simmer, so if you plan to reheat and/or value the integrity of your vegetable chunks add them with the barley and tomatoes. Recipe serves at least six.

*Home-made baked beans from Jane and Jeremy Strode. I started paying attention to my sodium intake this month, canned baked beans sadly made the too salty list and have been banished from Friday night fry-ups and Sunday brunches. To prepare the 450 grams of dry cannellini beans I used the 90 minute, no-soak beans technique to completely cook the beans; then I seasoned the beans (sans bacon) using the Strode recipe replacing the white pepper with mustard powder. The process makes five 450 gram batches of cooked beans; the resulting beans are infinitely better than the canned variety, but I'm on the lookout for another recipe to try.

*Chinese-style braised beef one-pot from the BBCs Good Food magazine. I made this using one kilo of beef shin, but I followed the recipe as written with respect to seasoning quantities since many commenters remarked that the dish needed extra seasoning. The ambiguous one red chili was six bird's eye chillies which gave a invigorating boost to the flavour of the dish and about 300 milliliters of stock was needed to cover the reduced quantity of meat. As written this recipe is unsoundly salty, I cut the salt back a bit by using home-made unsalted chicken stock and I didn't season the flour for browning the meat, it didn't need additional soy sauce either. My one kilo version would feed four very hungry people, or perhaps up to eight if it was served with other dishes; like all braises it is much better on the second night so make it a day in advance.

*Barbara Tropp's chill-orange oil. A dim recollection of a tasty sounding infused oil led me back to the New York Times Bitten blog and on a wild goose chase around the internet to find the actual recipe. I carefully watched my deep frying thermometer while the magic happened, sadly 15 minutes of boiling is overkill for infusing oil. The oil has a lovely aroma and it's moderately tasty on rice vermicelli with carrots and cucumbers, but I think I will toss this batch and try again as the burned chili overwhelms the other flavours. For the next attempt I will use the just-published Mark Bitman's method.

Chilli While They Last

Further trimming my cooking magazine collection, I set upon the Gourmet Travellers from 2005. Gourmet Traveller is a beautiful magazine (with a very average website) but I have rarely cooked from my issues. When I spied a Masterclass focussed on Mexico I decided to make the lima bean and chicken chilli verde for Sunday dinner and leftovers. As luck would have it I was able to buy a cheap kilo of anaheim chiles at the trash and treasure market at the Jamison Center on Sunday; now the frosts have started it's probably the last of the local peppers for the season.

This chilli tastes light and is deliciously spicy, perfect for an autumn eve, it's good served with sour cream, lots of fresh coriander and parsley, and steamed rice or some warm flour tortillas.

Lima Bean and Chicken Chilli Verde
Adapted from a recipe by Kathleen Gandy in Gourmet Traveller January 2005
Serves 6

250 g dried lima beans, soaked overnight
500 g fresh anaheim chillies
1 kg skinless chicken thighs cut into 2 cm cubes
Plain flour for dusting the chicken pieces
4 tbsp extra light olive oil
2 jalapeño chillies
1 large brown onion
3 cloves of garlic
400g tin of tomatoes
2 sprigs each of oregano and thyme
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 dried bay leaf
1 1/2 cups of chicken stock

Place the soaked lima beans in a large pot of fresh water and bring to the boil, cook for 30 minutes or until the beans are soft; drain and set aside.

Remove the stalks from the anaheim chillies, then place them under a grill on high. When the skin has blistered on one side, rotate the chillies. When they are charred all-over remove them from the grill and wrap them in cling wrap. While the chillies sweat, seed and dice the jalapeño chillies and dice the onions and garlic. Open the cling wrap parcel of chillies and slide the charred skin off the chilli, you can also remove some of the seeds; roughly chop the skinless chillies.

Toss the diced chicken with seasoned flour to coat. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large (28 cm) pot over a medium heat, then add a third of the chicken and cook for 3-4 minutes or until browned, then remove and set aside. Repeat twice with the remainder of the chicken.

Add the remaining oil to the pan, then add the chillies, onion and garlic and cook over a low-medium heat for 5-6 minutes or until softened. Crush and add tomatoes, herb and stock and increase the heat to bring the mixture to the boil. Return the chicken to the pan and add the drained lima beans. Decrease the heat to low and cook with the lid on for 20 minutes, season with salt and pepper and cook for a further 20 minutes with the lid off to allow the sauce to thicken.

A Persian Experiment

Gözleme filled with silverbeet and feta, the soup was not so photogenic

I've recently been reading a lot about the Food of Turkey, Lebanon and the Middle East and was inspired by this post from the Canberra Cook to try and make gözleme. Gözleme is a super-thin, filled Turkish pastry. I checked my copy of turquoise by Greg and Lucy Malouf, they list yufka as the ideal wrapping, filo as a substitute (further reading leads me to believe that gözleme dough is different to both these pastry's). I thought the photo on taste.com.au looked pretty good, so I lazily used their recipe with leavened dough. A wet leavened dough is not easy to roll thin, the Archivist tried his best, but the resulting pastries turned out more like a tasty pide than the gözleme I had imagined. Where the dough was thin, the siverbeet and feta were enhanced with a squeeze of lemon and tasted sublime. Those hints of the real thing make me want to try again, next time I will try this version.

The unmitigated success of the meal was the accompanying soup, from New Flavours of the Lebanese Table by Nada Saleh. This lemony green lentil soup is rich, sour and oddly compelling.

Adas Bi-Hamud
Serves 4
Adapted from New Flavours of the Lebanese Table by Nada Saleh

225 g green lentils
1.5 L water or stock
1 large onion (200g and over), peel and finely diced
2 medium potatoes (350-400 g), washed and diced into 1.5 cm cubes
6-7 large silverbeet or swiss chard leaves, remove the main rib and cut into fine ribbons
6 sprigs of fresh coriander
4 garlic cloves, skin removed and crushed
1/2 tsp of salt or to taste
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp lemon juice

Put the lentils in a medium saucepan, add the water or stock and bring to the boil. Add the onion, potatoes, greens and bring to the boil again. Reduce the heat to medium and leave to simmer for 15 minutes. Add the garlic, coriander, salt and pepper and simmer over a low heat for 20 minutes or until the lentils are soft. Add the oil in the last 5 minutes (you can omit the oil if you have used a stock that contains some fat). Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Spicy Lentil Soup

The Archivist had to get a wisdom tooth removed; the procedure wasn't especially traumatic by his account, but the dentist recommended soft foods be eaten on the following day. I love soups and braises, and the weather here had turned unseasonally mild. For lunch I made a soup inspired by one my mum used to like to make - using a can of Sanitarium Savoury Lentils and a can of tomato soup with some fresh vegetables added; my version uses some short cuts but is far more satisfying. I used half green and half Australian puy lentils, the puy held up well to the long cooking time and and green started to disintegrate making the tomatoey broth rich and hearty.

Spicy Lentil Soup
Makes 6 serves

1 tbsp olive oil
2 small brown onions, diced
3 small carrots, cut in half length ways and into half-moons
1 cup of celery, cut into crescents
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
1.5 liters chicken or vegetable stock or water
300 g lentils
3 small potatoes, diced into 2 cm cubes
600 ml tomato passata
1 zucchini, cut in half and into half-moons

Sweat the onion, carrot and celery in olive oil in a saucepan of about 3 liter capacity over a low heat, the onions should turn translucent and the vegetables should soften - if the vegetables stick or brown the pan is too hot. Grind the cumin, coriander and black pepper, add these spices and the paprika to the pan. When the spices are fragrant add the stock, lentils, potatoes and passata and let simmer over a low heat for about an hour and a half. Add the zucchini about 10 minutes before serving, other delicate green vegetables like broccoli or baby peas could also be added at this point. Add salt to taste.

This soup reheats well, but you may need to add some water on the second day. It also freezes well.